ur of absorbed concentration.

"Pants," suggested the judge. But he woke up in the night to wonder
again what part of Vergil Sandy had been studying.

"How about the scholarship?" he asked the next day of Mr. Moseley, the
principal of the academy.

Mr. Moseley pursed his lips and considered the matter ponderously. He
regarded it as ill befitting an instructor of youth to dispose of any
subject in words of less than three syllables.

"Your protege, Judge Hollis, is an ambiguous proposition. He possesses
invention and originality, but he is sadly lacking in sustained
concentration."

"But if he studies," persisted the judge, "you think he may win it?"

Mr. Moseley wrinkled his brows and looked as if he were solving a
problem in Euclid. "Probably," he admitted; "but there is a most
insidious enemy with which he has to contend."

"An enemy?" repeated the judge, anxiously.

"My dear sir," said Mr. Moseley, sinking his voice to husky solemnity,
"the boy is stung by the tarantula of athletics!"

It was all too true. The Ambiguous Proposition had found, soon after
reaching Clayton, that base-ball was what he had been waiting for all
his life. It was what he had been born for, what he had crossed the
ocean for, and what he would gladly have died for.

There could have been no surer proof of his growing power of
concentration than that he kept a firm grasp on his academy work
during these trying days. It was a hand-to-hand fight with the great
mass of knowledge that had been accumulating at such a cruel rate
during the years he had spent out of school. He was making gallant
progress when a catastrophe occurred.

The great ball game of the season, which was to be played in Lexington
between the Clayton team and the Lexington nine, was set for June 2.
And June 2 was the day which cruel fate--masked as the board of
trustees--had set for the academy examinations. Sandy was the only
member of the team who attended the academy, and upon him alone rested
the full agony of renunciation. His disappointment was so utterly
crushing that it affected the whole family.

"Couldn't they postpone the game?" asked the judge.

"It was the second that was the only day the Lexingtons could play,"
said Sandy, in black despair. "And to think of me sitting in the
bloomin' old school-room while Sid Gray loses the game in me place!"

For a week before the great event he lived in retirement. The one
topic of conversation in town was the ba